“First Officer Zadair,” I transmitted, “report! Why hasn’t the crew abandoned ship?”
“They’re waiting for you to get into your pod, Sir. Nothing I can do. Their minds are made up. They aren’t leaving without you.”
Touching, I thought.
When the battle was over, I planned on giving each of them some serious disciplinary attention. I’d teach them not to disobey a direct order. For now, I guessed I’d have to keep them alive if I wanted to kick their asses later, after I’d finished what I stayed behind to do.
A few taps on the tactical display brought up the automatic weapons system. It wasn’t as accurate or intuitive as what a real person could do, but it would suffice. The Federation had found it fit to bless me with enough firepower to take on four or five of our own vessels.
I grasped the edge of my seat. It felt like the universe was tipping and starting to slide. I tried to force myself to focus—to get back to the mission. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath as another unseen wave passed through me.
After-effects of portal travel, I told myself. I wasn’t a doctor, but it made sense. Entering hyperspace was the only thing I’d done differently than in my previous missions. My only hope was that when—or if—I got out of hyperspace the weird dizziness would stop. If not, then I knew the doctors back home could fix me up.
My missiles hit first. There were no explosions, huge flashes of light, or slowly expanding clouds of bug-debris. Instead, two of the six Xeno vessels veered off-course. I’d broken whatever had kept them pointed at the Revenge.
According to the tactical display, the first two had been hulled but not badly enough to destroy or even dissuade them.
An icon on the tactical display began flashing, indicating activation of the point-defense systems. The Type-3s had begun to fire at maximum range. They blasted the leading edge of the missiles every tenth of a second with x-ray lasers, each shot removing about an inch of carapace with every impact.
One missile was hulled. Somewhere deep in the bug’s guts, a fuel cluster had probably broke, burning the creature from the inside. The rest began to spin, spreading out the damage.
I cursed, activated the Type-1s as point-defense, and grabbed the straps holding me to the chair. I braced for impact and was disappointed with the results. I barely felt them and had to check the sensors to see if I’d damaged all the missiles badly enough that they broke up on impact.
They hadn’t. Instead of penetrating the hull and chewing it up from the inside, they’d alighted and were now crawling along the exterior toward the big Type-1s. I cursed and tried to force the point-defense to target them, but the Type-3s weren’t designed to shoot things off the hull. If the bugs made it to the big guns, there’d be no way I’d have enough firepower to fight them.
A thought occurred to me.
Battles are lost because commanders are either incapable or unwilling to think outside of their training.
I had enough firepower to take the enemy on. I even had a decent chance of winning. I just had to think.
Then it came to me. The powerplants charged capacitors for the weapons systems, but the weapons themselves had their own high-speed batteries. They’d only hold enough for a single shot, but it could be enough.
No more time to think about it. It was time to do something.
I took manual control of the two forward Type-3s, checked to make sure their capacitors were full, and detached them from the hull. The guns floated slowly as I reactivated the point-defense and waited.
Four seconds later, the gun on the starboard side fired once, hulling one of the bug-ships on that side. But the starboard one was spinning the wrong direction. It would be several minutes before it made a complete revolution. By then it would be all over.
It was time, and I was ready. I designated targets, switched half of the point-defense to active attack, and sent another silent thought to the Void Gods. It felt good to do so. Unnaturally good. Joker’s prayers had obviously rubbed off on me, and all those indoctrination sessions in the colonel’s office must have filtered into my mind. Even so, a quick prayer to some other power was as good a hope as any, given my current circumstances.
I disabled the safeties on the navigation system and set the Revenge’s destination as the slightly larger of the two Xeno ships headed our way. With the safeties disabled, our captured Xeno vessel would do its best to obtain the same position in space as our attackers. End result? A glorious explosion of powerplants and bug guts.
The First Officer shouted something in my ear, but I ignored him and focused on the task at hand. I couldn’t deploy the Burner against them. The device was designed to work on planets. It was also designed to be deployed into a gravity well. I couldn’t even aim it properly. If I survived this somehow and got back home, I planned on addressing that small oversight.
Now, it was time to save my crew.
“On my way, you disobedient assholes!” I roared into the ship-wide comms. I was touched by their gesture, but it wasn’t proper for me to come right out and say it. I was the ship’s captain, after all.
My pod was a short run from the bridge. I never thought I’d use it. Nobody ever thought they would, but Federation troops trained constantly on all the equipment we were expected to operate. Even escape pods.
I slapped the control panel on the circular hatch our techs had installed. The bulkhead irised open with a high-pitched hiss. I hesitated. The automatic fire of the ship’s weapons wasn’t very accurate. At best, they’d get one pass at our enemy and maybe score five or six hits on a single ship.
The navigation system was sluggish compared to what a
